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Let's see ... tomorrow night there is a Tori Tribute Show 2003 in Chapel Hill NC, being a benefit for Rainn -- details here. I gave them one of the lovely STARDUST art prints that San Diego Comic Con did as a gift for retailers in about 1996 (you can see a tiny detail from the bottom of it, the self-portrait of Charles Vess & me, on the Tori Tribute site) for them to use to raise money.

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According to http://www.news24.com/News24/Finance/Companies/0,,2-8-24_1346143,00.html, Richard Branson's Virgin Airlines have offered to take over the retiring Concorde fleet. It looks like a publicity stunt, but I'd like it to happen. I've only ever flown Concorde once (after the airmiles person on the other end of the phone said "Given all the rule-busting you'll have to do, if you use miles to go to Europe, that's 200,000 miles. You might as well go by Concorde." And I said, "Er, I can use airmiles for Concorde?" "Oh, sure. They got a code-sharing deal with Air France. You want to do that?" and I said "Oh yes,") and I would hate to see the Concordes stop flying, not for what they are, but for what they represent. The time I rode Concorde (it's smaller inside than you imagine; the tiny windows make it seem bigger than it is in photographs) it felt like riding in someone else's future - travelling fast enough and high enough to see the curvature of the Earth, while still being very aware that the plane I was travelling in was only a little younger than I was, like an aging Tomorrowland Ride built in the early Sixties.

I think I'll miss the Concordes mostly because they felt like a step on the road that would have given us tourist shuttles to lunar hotels, which doesn't seem to be the road we're walking any longer.

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Free Comicbook Day has a website at http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ -- poke around the website to find out what's being given away, how to find a comic store at which you can get your free comics, and so on.